Resilience Alliance Inc.

A Theory on Urban Resilience to Floods—A Basis for Alternative Planning Practices

Author(s): Kuei-Hsien Liao
Source: Ecology and Society, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Dec 2012)
Published by: Resilience Alliance Inc.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26269244
Accessed: 01-09-2019 13:17 UTC

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26269244?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0

International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

Resilience Alliance Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Ecology and Society

This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Copyright © 2012 by the author(s). Published here under license by the Resilience Alliance.
Liao, K. 2012. A theory on urban resilience to floods—a basis for alternative planning practices. Ecology
and Society 17(4): 48. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-05231-170448

Insight
A Theory on Urban Resilience to Floods—A Basis for Alternative
Planning Practices
Kuei-Hsien Liao 1

ABSTRACT. River cities require a management approach based on resilience to floods rather than on resistance. Resisting
floods by means of levees, dams, and channelization neglects inherent uncertainties arising from human–nature couplings and
fails to address the extreme events that are expected to increase with climate change, and is thereby not a reliable approach to
long-term flood safety. By applying resilience theory to address system persistence through changes, I develop a theory on
“urban resilience to floods” as an alternative framework for urban flood hazard management. Urban resilience to floods is defined
as a city’s capacity to tolerate flooding and to reorganize should physical damage and socioeconomic disruption occur, so as to
prevent deaths and injuries and maintain current socioeconomic identity. It derives from living with periodic floods as learning
opportunities to prepare the city for extreme ones. The theory of urban resilience to floods challenges the conventional wisdom
that cities cannot live without flood control, which in effect erodes resilience. To operationalize the theory for planning practice,
a surrogate measure—the percent floodable area—is developed for assessing urban resilience to floods. To enable natural
floodplain functions to build urban resilience to floods, flood adaptation is advocated in order to replace flood control for
mitigating flood hazards.
Key Words: flood adaptation; flood control; flood hazard management; resilience-based management; resilience surrogate;
resilient cities; urban floodplains; urban resilience

INTRODUCTION
Flood hazards challenge river cities around the world, despite
many of them being protected by extensive flood-control
infrastructures, such as levees, dams, and channelization. The
twenty-first century has already seen large-scale flood
disasters in Bangkok, Thailand (2011); Brisbane, Australia
(2011); Guangdong, China (2007); New Orleans, USA (2005);
Dresden, Germany (2002); and Taipei, Taiwan (2001), among
others. The industrialized world has heavily relied on flood
control to mitigate flood hazards, yet it is criticized for harming
riverine ecosystems and increasing long-term flood risk
(Burby et al. 2000, Smits et al. 2006). Alternative management
concepts have emerged, emphasizing the integration between
land and water management and of structural and nonstructural
measures (e.g., Schneidergruber et al. 2004, Associated
Programme on Flood Management 2009). Nevertheless,
scholars continue to assert the indispensability of flood-
control infrastructure for cities (e.g., Birkland et al. 2003,
Godschalk 2003), which reflects the entrenched management
paradigm of controlling nature.
Designed and operated under an obsolete assumption that the
pattern of flow variability remains unchanged over time (Milly
et al. 2008), flood-control infrastructure is not a reliable
mitigation approach in the face of climate change uncertainties
(Zevenbergen and Gersonius 2007). Cities that depend on
flood-control infrastructure can resist floods only up to a
certain magnitude, thereby these cities are ill-prepared for
capacity-exceeding extreme floods, which are expected to
increase with more intense storms whose exact natures are
unpredictable (Alley et al. 2007). An alternative mitigation
approach is needed, which this paper addresses by developing
a flood hazard management concept that focuses on resilience.
The idea of resilience has a long history in ecology and
engineering, but its application to natural hazard management
is relatively recent (Berkes 2007). What defines resilience to
floods remains ambiguous, despite the increasing attention
given to the concept of resilience in flood hazard management.
In this paper I address urban built environment and riverine
flooding to develop a theory on “urban resilience to floods”.
There are two major resilience interpretations—engineering
resilience and ecological resilience (Holling 1996). I explain
why the latter is a more appropriate theoretical framework for
management and for defining urban resilience to floods. In
order to operationalize the theory for planning practices, a
resilience surrogate measure is proposed for assessing urban
resilience to floods. The theory and the measure together
indicate that flood adaptation should replace flood control in
order to build urban resilience to floods.
INTERPRETATIONS OF RESILIENCE
Engineering resilience and ecological resilience are two
distinct interpretations (Holling 1996). Discerning their
fundamental differences is important because they lead to
divergent problem definitions, focuses, and approaches when
applied to flood hazard management.

1
Department of Architecture, School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore

This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Engineering resilience and ecological resilience
In engineering, resilience is concerned with disturbances that
threaten the functional stability of engineering systems, which
are often linked with low probabilities of failures or, in the
case of failure, quick recovery to normal levels of functionality
(Wang and Blackmore 2009). Such resilience depends on four
properties: robustness, or the physical strength to withstand a
disturbance without functional degradation; redundancy, or
the extent to which system components are substitutable;
resourcefulness, or the capacity to identify problems and
mobilize needed resources; and rapidity, or the capacity to
restore the system in a timely manner (Bruneau et al. 2003).
This engineering resilience concept encompasses both
resistance to and recovery from disturbances, although the
measurement is focused exclusively on recovery—the faster
the full functionality is restored, the greater the resilience (for
example, Hashimoto et al. 1982, Hollnagel et al. 2008, Fig.
1). Engineering resilience thus emphasizes the ability to
bounce back to the original condition when relaxed from stress
(Wang and Blackmore 2009).
Fig. 1. A conceptual representation of engineering
resilience, modified after Wang and Blackmore (2009).
Resilience of a damaged system is measured by the time it
takes (t1-t0 for Case A) for the system to recover to 100%
of its previous functionality. The longer it takes, the less
resilient the system is (Case B).
In ecology, Holling (1973) introduces the term resilience to
describe observed ecosystem dynamics. It challenges the
conventional ecological paradigm of equilibrium that assumes
a predetermined stable state for every ecosystem, to which it
eventually returns after a disturbance. Empirical studies show
that some ecosystems never stabilize due to frequent
disturbances. Multi-equilibria also exist when the ecosystem
stabilizes after a disturbance but in a different state. It means
the ecosystem is characterized by a different set of structures
This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Ecology and Society 17(4): 48
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art48/
and processes, and returning to the previous ecosystem is
extremely difficult if not impossible (Holling 1973, Scheffer
et al. 2001). Building on the alternative paradigm of multi-
equilibria/nonequilibrium, Holling (1973) defines resilience
as the system’s ability to absorb disturbances and still persist.
This ecological resilience concept focuses on persistence, or
remaining within the same regime defined by the same
processes, structures, feedbacks, and identity (Walker et al.
2004). Because systems do not operate near equilibrium,
resilience is associated with the change the system can tolerate
and the ability to reorganize or renew (Carpenter et al. 2001).
It is measured by the magnitude of the disturbance the system
can undergo before shifting to a different regime (Gunderson
and Holling 2002).
In addressing different types of systems, several disparities
exist between engineering and ecological resilience (Table 1).
They derive mainly from the different assumptions of system
dynamics regarding the number of possible regimes (Holling
1996, Fig. 2). The assumption behind engineering resilience,
which is about maintaining the optimal state of functionality,
is congruent with the ecological paradigm of equilibrium,
presuming only one regime with an idealized stable state as
the norm. The paradigmatic divergence reflects different
perceptions towards normalcy. In the engineering resilience
concept any change from the optimal state is deviant, while in
the ecological resilience concept any fluctuation within the
regime is normal because systems are inherently dynamic
(Holling 1973).
Essentially, engineering resilience is the ability to maintain
stability—remaining unchanged in system state or having
minimum fluctuation; whereas ecological resilience is the
ability to survive, regardless of the state. They are two
different, even contradictory, system properties. Systems with
high engineering resilience may have low ecological
resilience; low engineering resilience may introduce high
ecological resilience (Holling 1973, 1996).
Community resilience to natural hazards
The two resilience concepts receive increasing attention in
hybrid systems, such as social–ecological systems (e.g.,
Berkes and Folke 1998) and socio-technical systems (e.g.,
Hollnagel et al. 2008). In natural hazard management, which
deals with the interaction between humans and environmental
fluctuations (Mileti 1999), engineering resilience prevails in
current definitions of community resilience. Few authors
define it without implying an optimal reference state, and it is
frequently viewed as the capacity to withstand and recover
quickly from disasters (Table 2). For example, Birkland and
Waterman (2009) propose three features of community
resilience—damage prevention, speedy recovery, and
preservation of community functionality—arguing that the
more stresses the community can bear to preserve
functionality, the faster the recovery is.

Table 1. Differences between engineering resilience and ecological resilience.
Engineering resilience
Theoretic construct Resilience = resistance + recovery
Assumption One equilibrium (one regime)
Predictability
Concerns Deviation from the ideal level of system functionality or
stable state
Focus Stability/consistency—returning quickly to the equilibrium
Measurement The speed of recovery to the previous stable state
Disturbance role Disturbances as threats
Fig. 2. The paradigmatic difference between engineering
and ecological resilience can be illustrated by the ball-and-
cup heuristic (Scheffer et al. 1993, Walker et al. 2004). The
cup represents the region in the state space or "basin of
attraction", in which the system tends to remain, and
includes all possible values of system variables of interest.
The ball represents the state of the system at any given time.
The engineering resilience concept assumes only one
regime, hence only one possible basin of attraction; and the
very bottom of the basin represents the ideal stable state.
The ecological resilience concept assumes multiple regimes,
hence more than one basin of attraction. The system may
move about within the basin, never settling at the bottom; it
may also cross a threshold and settle in a new basin of
attraction. The notion of engineering resilience is concerned
with whether the system can remain at the bottom of the
basin; while the notion of ecological resilience is concerned
with whether the system can remain within the current basin
(Holling 1996).
This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Ecology and Society 17(4): 48
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art48/
Ecological resilience
Resilience = tolerance + reorganization
Multiple equilibria (multiple regimes)
Unpredictability and uncertainty
Regime shift
Persistence—remaining within the current regime
The magnitude of disturbance the system can undergo before
shifting to a different regime
Disturbances as learning opportunities
Discussions on community resilience place an overwhelming
emphasis on recovery (e.g., Vale and Campanella 2005,
Lamond and Proverbs 2009). In many cases, resilience is taken
to mean exclusively the capacity to bounce back to the
predisaster state, to differentiate from resistance, which means
the ability to withstand a disturbance without disruption (e.g.,
Etkin 1999). In flood hazard management, for example,
resistance means flood prevention by flood-control
infrastructure, while resilience is the rate of return from a
flood-impacted state to the normal one (De Bruijn 2004).
ECOLOGICAL RESILIENCE AS THE
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Applying the engineering resilience concept to communities
that are subject to natural hazards is fundamentally
problematic because of the outdated equilibrium paradigm.
Recovery is often interpreted as returning to predisaster
conditions, implicitly assuming an optimal reference state,
which nevertheless does not exist in coupled human–natural
systems (Berkes 2007). Urbanized floodplains are such
systems, where climate, socioeconomic trends, built systems,
and riverine processes affect flood hazards and disasters. They
operate like evolving ecosystems rather than engineering
systems and are characterized by complex behaviors
associated with nonlinearity, emergence, uncertainty, and
surprise (Liu et al. 2007). Such dynamic systems will not stay
at a predetermined state. To be sure, moving quickly from a
chaotic state to an organized one after a disaster is paramount,
but it is unconstructive to restore the predisaster
socioeconomic activities and built environments that are
vulnerable in the first place (Klein et al. 2003). What remains
unchallenged in this recovery notion is the preoccupation with
stability. Stability becomes problematic when forced at
temporal and spatial scales, at which the system is inherently
dynamic (Cumming et al. 2006).
The ecological resilience concept is a more appropriate
framework for flood hazard management, for it builds on a
more realistic paradigm of multi-equilibria, focusing
pragmatically on persistence in a world of flux (Adger et al.
2005). Thanks to studies on integrated social–ecological
systems (e.g., Berkes et al. 2003), the ecological resilience
 Ecology and Society 17(4): 48
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art48/

Table 2. Some existing definitions of community resilience that are akin to engineering resilience.

Definition of resilience Reference

Sustainable and resilient communities are defined as societies that are structurally organized to minimize the effects Tobin (1999:13)
of disasters, and at the same time have the ability to recovery quickly by restoring the socioeconomic vitality of the
community.
Resilience is the capacity to prevent or mitigate losses and then, if damage does occur, to maintain normal living Buckle et al. (2000:13)
conditions as far as possible, and to manage recovery from the impacts.
Resilient cities are capable of withstanding severe shock without incurring either immediate chaos or permanent Godschalk (2003:136)
damage, and of recovering from the impacts of natural hazards.
A resiliently built environment should be designed, located, built, operated, and maintained in ways that maximize Bosher (2008:13)
the ability of built assets, associated support systems (physical and institutional), and the people that reside or work
within the built assets to withstand, recover from, and mitigate the impacts of extreme natural and human-induced
hazards.
The notion of resilience encompasses predisaster planning and warning systems, emergency handling procedures, Lamond and Proverbs (2009:63)
and postdisaster reconstruction. Urban resilience encompasses the idea that towns and cities should be able to
recover quickly from major and minor disasters.

concept has become a sophisticated resilience theory,
addressing complex human-nature couplings. It is
instrumental for addressing flood hazards that arise from the
interaction between riverine and urban dynamics.
From maintaining stability to building resilience
Two key arguments in resilience theory would shift the
paradigm of flood hazard management. First, resilience arises
from adapting to inherent variability, uncertainty, and surprise
(Folke 2003). Coupled human–natural systems lose resilience
when the inherent variability is artificially suppressed to
promote stability through command-and-control management
(Holling and Meffe 1996, Holling et al. 2002). This suggests
that forcing floodplains to be inundation-free and building
socioeconomic functionality upon forced environmental
stability results in resilience erosion. It thus challenges the bias
towards maintaining a dry floodplain and steady
socioeconomic activities. Flood hazard management based on
resilience theory would begin with acknowledging periodic
floods as inherent environmental dynamics, by which
socioeconomic activities on floodplains are inevitably
affected.
Secondly, resilience theory holds that periods of gradual
development and sudden changes complement each other
(Folke 2006). As demonstrated in frequently disturbed
ecosystems, resilience is borne out of experiencing and
learning from disturbances (Holling 1973, Gunderson and
Holling 2002). Research into communities relying on natural
resources also indicates that resilience to large, unpredictable
disturbances derives from allowing smaller ones to enter the
system (Berkes and Folke 1998, Berkes et al. 2003). It suggests
that flooding itself is an agent for resilience because each flood
experience creates a chance for cities to adjust internal
structures and processes and to build knowledge, leading to
diverse coping strategies cumulated over time (Folke 2006,
Smit and Wandel 2006). This contrasts with the attitude toward
floods as being threatening, idiosyncratic events that
legitimize flood control. As flood-control infrastructure
prevents most floods, cities only learn painfully from rare,
catastrophic ones with high prices. In the resilience-based
flood hazard management, periodic floods are learning
opportunities for cities to become better fit for extreme floods.
Overall, resilience theory suggests a paradigm shift in flood
hazard management that should focus on building resilience
as opposed to maintaining stability. Because flooding is
inherently a part of the normal urban dynamics, resilience is
neither flood resistance nor recovery to predisaster conditions
—both are simply means to an end of stability. Here, resilience
is the tendency to survive, which is itself an end.
URBAN RESILIENCE TO FLOODS
Two issues must be confronted before building the theory of
urban resilience to floods based on resilience theory that
originates in ecology. The resilience of ecological systems is
concerned with system collapse; yet such a concern for cities
is almost irrelevant, as history shows that most cities that have
experienced catastrophic destructions have persisted and even
flourished (Vale and Campanella 2005). A city remaining as
a city means little to those who have lost their lives and to
those forced into permanent hardship (Klein et al. 2003).
Moreover, individual people matter in hazard management,
although individual creatures are irrelevant to ecological
systems that build resilience through system-level adaptation
where less-fit individuals are continuously replaced
(Gunderson 2010). Thus, urban resilience to floods
encompasses dual concerns: the flood safety of individual
citizens and the maintenance of the city’s current identity.
A definition
Resilience theory has been applied to community resilience,
stressing the capacity to absorb recurrent hazard impacts and
reorganize while undergoing change so as to maintain
fundamental structures, processes, identity, and feedbacks
(Table 3). Likewise, urban resilience to floods is defined as

This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Ecology and Society 17(4): 48
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art48/

Table 3. Some existing definitions of community resilience, without emphasizing recovery.

Definition of resilience Reference

The resilience of the coast is its self-organizing capacity to preserve actual and potential functions under changing Klein et al. (1998:263)
hydraulic and morphological conditions.
Resiliency is the ability to withstand an extreme natural event without suffering devastating losses, damage, Mileti (1999:32-33)
diminished productivity, or quality of life, and without a large amount of assistance from outside the community.
Resilience is the ability of an actor to cope with or adapt to hazard stress. It is a product of the degree of planned Pelling (2003:48)
preparation undertaken in the light of potential hazard, and of spontaneous or premeditated adjustments made in
response to felt hazard, including relief and rescue.
Resilience is the capacity of linked social–ecological systems to absorb recurrent disturbances such as hurricanes or Adger et al. (2005:1036)
floods so as to retain essential structures, processes, and feedbacks.
Disaster resilience could be viewed as the intrinsic capacity of a system, community, or society that is predisposed to Manyena (2006:446)
a shock or stress to adapt and survive by changing its nonessential attributes and rebuilding itself.
Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still Berkes (2007:284)
retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks.
A resilient system is able to absorb hazard impacts without changing its fundamental functions; at the same time, it is López-Marrero and Tschakert
able to renew, reorganize, and adapt when hazard impacts are significant. (2011:230)

the capacity of the city to tolerate flooding and to reorganize
should physical damage and socioeconomic disruption occur,
so as to prevent deaths and injuries and maintain current
socioeconomic identity. It can be conceptualized as the
capacity to remain in a desirable regime while experiencing a
flood. The desirable regime is defined by a set of variables
reflecting aspects such as livelihood security, economic
performance, and mobility that collectively represent the city’s
socioeconomic identity (Adger 2000, Cumming et al. 2005,
Gunderson 2010). Urban resilience to floods is measured by
the flood magnitude the city can undergo until it reaches a
threshold and shifts to an undesirable regime.
Unlike that for biophysical systems, a regime is socially rather
than scientifically defined. The desirable regime reflects the
city’s tolerable range of socioeconomic state changes, which
matters to urban resilience to floods (Fig. 3). A wider range
implies that the city considers a greater degree of
socioeconomic fluctuations normal, hence a larger/deeper
basin of attraction; whereas a narrow range leads to a smaller/
shallow basin of attraction, and a flood could cause a regime
shift easier (Carpenter et al. 2001, Walker et al. 2004).
A city is considered to have shifted to an undesirable regime
when experiencing a flood disaster involving widespread
human, economic, and environmental changes that exceed the
city’s own ability to cope (United Nations International
Strategy for Disaster Reduction 2004). The undesirable regime
is characterized by significantly reduced resources and assets,
large-scale population displacement, livelihood disruption,
and loss of security (Adger 2000, Berkes et al. 2003). Once in
it, moving to a better regime or developing a socioeconomic
identity similar to the previous one is costly or impossible.
Essentially, urban resilience to floods is the capacity to avoid
flood disaster. To prevent physical damage and socioeconomic
disruption from occurring, it would depend on the city's
floodability, which is defined here as the physical ability to
accommodate—not resist—flooding. If damage and
disruption had occurred, remaining in the regime counts on
reorganization—reestablishment of socioeconomic order.
While the return to preflood conditions is irrelevant, the speed
of reorganization matters because prolonged socioeconomic
disruption can eventually push the city into an undesirable
regime (Walker and Westley 2011). Overall, urban resilience
to floods is defined by floodability and reorganization, not
flood resistance and recovery that engineering resilience
would suggest.
Fig. 3. The tolerable range of socioeconomic state change
dictates the shape or size of the basin of attraction that
represents the desirable regime. A narrow range means a
smaller, shallow basin (Case A), while a wider range leads
to a larger, deeper basin (Case B).
Key properties
Resilience is frequently associated with self-organization,
adaptive capacity, and redundancy (Carpenter et al. 2001, Low
et al. 2003, Tompkins and Adger 2004). Self-organizing
systems are resilient to disturbances because of the distributed
character (Heylighen 2001). Adaptive capacity can increase
resilience over time, as it is associated with learning—the
ability to adjust to changing internal demands and external

This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

conditions (Gunderson 2000, Carpenter and Brock 2008).
Redundancy provides insurance against total system failure.
These concepts can be translated into the following key
properties of urban resilience to floods.
Localized flood-response capacity
Self-organizing cities, where each citizen and public manager
could act immediately to avoid damage, are more agile in
coping with flooding and are thus more resilient than cities
that rely on centralized mechanisms such as flood-control
infrastructure. If disrupted, they can also quickly reorganize
because of the internal ability to clean up and fix damage
without waiting for external help from the central government
or aid agencies, which do not always act soon enough.
Timely adjustments after every flood
The adaptive capacity contributing to increasing urban
resilience to floods is associated with the ability to learn from
each flood, i.e., making timely behavioral, physical, and
institutional adjustments to be better prepared for the next
flood. Every flood entails something new, e.g., debris
deposition at unexpected locations. By understanding new
phenomena and making necessarily adjustments, the city
incrementally increases floodability. It is a learning-by-doing
process, where novelty is involved in the adaptation to avoid
repeating the previous configuration (Walker et al. 2004,
Adger 2006, Berkes 2007).
Redundancy in subsystems
Here, redundancy is more than duplication of the same element
in an engineering sense, e.g., the freeboard added on top of
the levee height required for confining a certain flow. It entails
diversity and functional replication across scales (Peterson et
al. 1998, Adger et al. 2005). For example, a water supply
network with redundancy would incorporate both regional and
localized systems and utilize different water sources. A flood
hazard management system with redundancy would comprise
a diversity of measures for mitigation, preparedness, response,
and reorganization. The flood-response capacity would be
distributed across the levels, i.e., individuals, communities,
and the municipality, such that when the capacity of one level
is overwhelmed, the city can still count on the others.
Underpinning the aforementioned three properties are
diversity and flexibility. Short-term adjustments and long-
term adaptation are impossible without a diversity of options
to choose from (Folke et al. 2002, Davidson-Hunt and Berkes
2003). Diversity is particularly key to resilience because it
enables adaptation by providing seeds for new opportunities
(Berkes 2007). For example, a diverse economy or livelihood
is known to facilitate reorganization after disasters (Berke and
Campanella 2006). Flexibility allows the self-organizing city
to preserve overall functionality during flooding by making
immediate changes at smaller, faster scales in its subsystems
(Allen et al. 2005). For example, if the public transportation
system could quickly switch its service mode from land-based
This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Ecology and Society 17(4): 48
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art48/
to waterborne when a flood occurs, it would ensure mobility
to keep the city functional. Flexibility also promotes adaptive
capacity, for rigidity prevents timely adjustments.
Urban resilience to floods and urban river resilience
Resilience of ecological systems plays an important role in
human ability to cope with hazards. This is because it concerns
the persistence of ecosystem services, the loss of which limits
the options to adapt (Adger 2000, Berkes et al. 2003,
Gunderson 2010). Ecosystem goods and services, such as
fisheries and clean water, provided by rivers and other
freshwater ecosystems are highly valuable (Costanza et al.
1997). While it is clear why ecosystem services are important
to communities that are dependent on local resources for
livelihoods (Adger et al. 2005), it is not obvious how resilience
of local urban rivers relates to urban resilience to floods in
modern cities. With significantly altered hydrology,
geomorphology, biochemistry, and species composition,
many urban rivers today are arguably already in socially–
ecologically undesirable regimes, too degraded to offer
ecosystem services (Paul and Meyer 2001, Groffman et al.
2003). Although drawing on services generated elsewhere
buffers the impact of local declines, the degrading urban river
still affects urban resilience to floods. Flooding of a polluted
river increases damage and complicates reorganization;
moreover, if a flood disrupts the imports of goods and services,
the city would have no access to critical resources such as
potable water. Resilience of urban rivers matters to urban
resilience to floods as the ultimate insurance against the most
socioeconomically disruptive floods.
Urban resilience to floods and flood resistance
Conventional wisdom assumes that flood resistance is
necessary for cities; however, resilience theory suggests that
it erodes urban resilience to floods (Holling and Meffe 1996).
In effect, flood-control infrastructure puts the city in one or
the other contrasting conditions: dry and stable, or inundated
and disastrous. With flood-control infrastructure in place,
flooding results exclusively from the infrastructure's failure
and is more hazardous than if there were no flood-control
infrastructure (Tobin 1995), such that the natural process of
flooding becomes a synonym to disaster. Cities that are
dependent on flood-control infrastructure are highly resistant
—but not resilient—to floods because they have physically
adapted to the artificially expanded dry-and-stable conditions
to become intolerant of wet conditions (Fig. 4).
In cities that are dependent on flood-control infrastructure, the
river’s high flows are mostly confined between levees or held
behind the upstream dam. The flood frequency is dramatically
reduced and river dynamics are largely unnoticed. Each flood
that is prevented is a loss of opportunity for learning (Klein et
al. 1998, Colten and Sumpter 2009). Little flood experience
leads to low awareness of flood risk among citizens (Correia
et al. 1998), who are too accustomed to operating under the
 Ecology and Society 17(4): 48
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art48/

Fig. 4. A comparison between the resistant and resilient city. The resistant city is dependent on flood-control infrastructure,
functioning only in the dry conditions and having little tolerance of socioeconomic state changes, i.e., narrow tolerable range.
This leads to a small basin of attraction of the desirable regime, whose size is indicated by the shaded area; hence low urban
resilience to floods. On the contrary, the resilient city tolerates flooding and much greater fluctuation in socioeconomic
conditions, thus having a larger basin and consequentially greater urban resilience to floods.

This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

dry-and-stable conditions, and know little about how to cope
with inundation once the flood-control infrastructure fails.
Furthermore, flood-control infrastructure’s structural rigidity
and large scope leave little flexibility for making timely
adjustments to constantly changing boundary conditions
(Pahl-Wostl 2002). The existence of flood-control
infrastructure also prevents the development of a diversity of
flood-coping measures because the development of such
measures is too expensive (Castonguay 2007). Whereas flood-
control infrastructure as a system may incorporate a diversity
of engineering measures, each with structural redundancy,
there is little diversity and cross-scale redundancy with regards
to physical measures. Cities that are dependent on flood-
control infrastructure tend to address only the river and not
the built environment because flood-control infrastructure, as
a centralized measure, creates a false sense of security that
precludes the need for localized flood-response capacity.
As flood-control infrastructure erodes urban resilience to
floods over time, a flood could easily cause high casualties
and severe damage, complicate reorganization that relies
heavily on external forces, and push the city to an undesirable
regime, as was demonstrated in New Orleans after Hurricane
Katrina in 2005 (Colten and Sumpter 2009). Flood-control
infrastructure also decreases urban resilience to floods through
its very function—i.e., prevention of periodic flooding.
Periodic flooding is a critical mechanism to maintain the
ecological functions and high biodiversity of floodplain rivers
(Junk et al. 1989). The altered flood regime, with which native
species are unfamiliar, affects the resilience of river
ecosystems and contributes to system collapse (Poff et al.
1997, Folke 2003). Therefore, flood-control infrastructure
compromises the river's ability to provide ecosystem services
(Tockner et al. 2008), which in turn limits the city's options
to adapt.
The argument that flood resistance erodes urban resilience to
floods echoes the widely supported notion of risk transference,
which holds that resistance to natural hazards is simply
postponing them, only to build up risks and worsen disasters
later (Etkin 1999, Mileti 1999). Because flood resistance
compromises urban resilience to floods, persistence resulting
from the flood being resisted—in effect no flood occurs—
should not be considered resilience.
OPERATIONALIZING THE THEORY
Turning theory into practice requires measuring urban
resilience to floods. The growing interest in managing for
social–ecological resilience has prompted research into
methods for assessing potential resilience to future
disturbances (e.g., Bennett et al. 2005, Cumming et al. 2005).
Because resilience is not directly observable, it must be
inferred from surrogates—forward-looking proxies for future
resilience—although it is recognized that it is not possible to
represent resilience with one surrogate alone (Carpenter et al.
2005).
This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Ecology and Society 17(4): 48
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art48/
Assessing urban resilience to floods requires surrogates for
floodability and the capacity for quick reorganization. The
former is addressed here. One way to find resilience surrogates
for coupled human–natural systems is to look for the internal
properties that alter resilience over time (Bennett et al. 2005).
Slowly changing properties are often good candidates because
they define the system’s underlying structure, thus controlling
the shape of the basin of attraction, threshold location, and
system’s position within the state space (Carpenter et al. 2001,
Scheffer et al. 2001). For river cities, a property defining
floodability would be one that reflects the physical and
hydrologic changes of the floodplain, over which human
interests conflict with flood processes to give rise to flood
disasters.
Functions of natural floodplains
Floodplains are essentially a part of the river, which naturally
function to convey and store the share of high flows and
sediments that spill overbank. During large floods the amount
of floodplain conveyance and storage is significantly greater
than that of the channel (Leopold 1994). Floodplain storage
occurs when the water is disconnected from the main channel
flow and is slowly released after the peak has passed (Richards
and Hughes 2008). Longer term storage takes place on the
surface of floodplain wetlands and through infiltration into the
floodplain soils, which can store large amounts of water during
wet periods (Keddy 2000). Floodplain vegetation represents
hydraulic roughness and exerts significant impacts on the
flood process. For example, the overall patchiness increases
the heterogeneity of flow patterns; dense vegetation dampens
the flood wave and traps sediments during minor floods; the
floodplain forest delays the release of floodwater stored on the
surface though frictional effect, thus further enhancing
floodplain storage (Tabacchi et al. 2000, Richards and Hughes
2008). Because of these hydrologic and hydraulic functions,
floodplain rivers have lower flood peaks and velocities, and
smaller flood discharges in downstream locations, compared
to other types of rivers (Leopold 1994).
As a floodplain becomes urbanized, its functions are often
replaced by artificially enhanced channel capacity, drainage
efficiency, and upstream impoundment. At the same time, the
river sees higher peak flows with increased downstream
discharges (Criss and Shock 2001), leading to higher flood
risk. The urbanized floodplain becomes less tolerant of
flooding for there is less land functioning to convey and store
floodwater and sediments.
Floodable lands and percent floodable area
To assess floodability, I propose a new concept—the floodable
land—which is defined as a land capable of storing or
conveying floodwater and sediments without incurring
damage locally and elsewhere. Floodable lands can be of any
land use and cover, thus not exclusively referring to
undeveloped or green areas such as wetlands. A green area
with contaminated soils, for example, would not be floodable;

a residential lot with the building raised on poles may be.
Floodable lands contribute to the city’s flood tolerance, as a
flood is benign where it is floodable. With a large combined
area, floodable lands can lower flood peaks to reduce the
overall flood impact. Everything else being equal, the more
floodable lands the higher the floodability, which can be
quantified by the percentage of the total area of floodable lands
within the floodplain area, or percent floodable area. The
floodplain area here refers to the entire valley floor between
valley walls (Anderson et al. 1996). It is not defined by any
flood recurrence interval because larger floods are always
possible.
It is worth noting that with a percent floodable area of 100%
a city could still be damaged by a rare, extreme flood, in which
case reorganization plays a major role in urban resilience to
floods. I hypothesize a positive but nonlinear relationship
between percent floodable area and floodability because at a
higher percent floodable area its marginal contribution to
floodplain storage and conveyance should decrease
significantly (Douglas et al. 2007). I further hypothesize that
there may be hysteresis involved in the relationship between
percent floodable area and urban resilience to floods (Fig. 5),
as seen in other complex systems (Scheffer et al. 2001, Alberti
and Marzluff 2004). The city may have to “go back further”
in reestablishing floodplain functions in order to shift to a
regime where the city is resilient and able to self-organize to
remain orderly during most floods, with a healthy urban river
to provide ecosystem services. As a surrogate for urban
resilience to floods, percent floodable area represents a city’s
physical fitness for flooding that matters to flood safety.
Improving percent floodable area to build resilience can be a
management approach that is an alternative to increasing the
protection standard of flood-control infrastructure for
enhancing resistance.
RESILIENCE-BASED FLOOD HAZARD
MANAGEMENT
Enhancing resistance to one disturbance in complex adaptive
systems often creates vulnerabilities to others (Holling and
Meffe 1996, Roberge 2002). Flood control ignores complexity
and unpredictability, exacerbating flood risk and creating
ecological disasters. Today many cities are not flood-safe
because they are premised on the artificial environmental
stability that is forced by flood-control infrastructure and
tolerate little socioeconomic fluctuation (Fig. 4). The
management paradigm of control must be abandoned (Folke
2003, Anderies et al. 2006). For long-term flood safety, cities
need to switch to resilience-based flood hazard management.
Living with floods
Resilience derives from living with disturbances (Gunderson
2000, Walker et al. 2004). Studies have shown that
communities that are adapted, not resistant, to disturbances
are long enduring (Berkes et al. 2003). Building urban
This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Ecology and Society 17(4): 48
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art48/
Fig. 5. The hypothetical dynamic of percent floodable area
(PFA). During the process of floodplain urbanization
(trajectory A), the city increasingly relies on flood control
for flood safety, moving along the upper solid line and
shifting dramatically at the threshold T1 (PFA = X1) to the
lower solid line. Passing T1, the floodplain has lost the
natural functions to handle floodwater, and the city enters
the regime where the river is degraded and the
socioeconomic dynamics become disrupted and chaotic
once a flood occurs. The city could move back to the regime
where the river is healthy, and the city can self-organize to
remain orderly during flooding by building resilience
through increasing percent floodable area and decreasing the
reliance on flood control. It is possible to significantly
increase percent floodable area by making large and small
open spaces multifunctional to convey and store floodwater
during wet seasons, and by retrofitting existing buildings to
be elevated, floatable, or wet-proofed. During the resilience-
building process (trajectory B), the city moves along the
lower solid line, but reaching X1 is not sufficient to restore
the same degree of resilience before the shift (T1). The city
needs to go further, passing T2 (PFA > X2) in order to
move back to the more resilient regime.
resilience to floods is essentially a process of adaptation—
instead of fighting the river, cities live with periodic floods,
allowing them to enter the city to learn from them, so as to
become resilient to extreme ones. It is a paradigm shift from
resistant to resilient cities with the management agenda
redirected from “safety against floods” to “safety at floods”
(Schielen and Roovers 2008). Urban resilience to floods lies
in a principle that has long been called for—working with the
river rather than against it (e.g., White 1945, Leopold 1977).
It also echoes the ancient philosophy of “living with floods”
that is still practiced today in rural communities in countries
such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Egypt (Laituri 2000,
Berkes 2007). Distinguishing between benign frequent floods

and disastrous rare ones, these communities adapt lifestyles
and built environments to river dynamics, harnessing the
postflood productivity boosts in fisheries and agriculture
(Cuny 1991).
Although relatively uncommon in the industrialized world,
similar practices can be seen in management schemes that
restore floodplain functions in rural areas to prevent
downstream flooding, such as the Yolo Bypass for Sacramento
River in the United States, the “Room for the River” project
in the Netherlands, and the “Making Space for Water” policy
in England (Moss and Monstadt 2008, Opperman et al. 2009).
While at the watershed scale the notion of living with floods
is increasingly accepted, it is dismissed in cities where lands
are deemed culturally and economically too valuable to be
inundated. That cities and floods are incompatible is an
entrenched perception, further enhanced by the argument that
retreating from floodplains is the fundamental solution to flood
hazards. Although logical, this prohibitionist discourse can
close down options and prevent creative solutions (Antrobus
2010). Because retreat is politically difficult in highly
populated areas and people intuitively assume there is no room
for flooding, cities have no choice but to continue relying on
flood-control infrastructure. However, cities are too valuable
to reject the paradigm shift to live with floods in order to
survive.
Flood adaptation
The assertion that cities and floods cannot coexist shows a
lack of imagination, resulting from being too accustomed to
the kind of built environment not adapted to floods. With a
shift in perception and creative planning and design, cities can
eventually phase out flood-control infrastructure and live with
floods by retrofitting the built environment and adding
redundancy, diversity, and flexibility into every subsystem.
Open spaces can become multifunctional to convey and store
floodwater during wet seasons (Douglas et al. 2007).
Infrastructure can be redesigned into a collection of diverse
functional elements that are flexible in operation (Fiering
1982). Buildings can be remodeled to be elevated, floatable,
or wet-proofed (Guikema 2009).
It would require a change in city design. An initiative called
“Water Sensitive Cities” is unfolding to integrate water
management into urban planning and design to promote
resilience to climate change (Howe and Michell 2012), with
Rotterdam being a notable example of flood adaptation
(Jacobs 2012). But a paradigm shift in city design is also
necessary—it should be based on dynamism instead of
presumed environmental stability. Floodplains are constantly
changing, rearranged not only by inundation but also by
channel migration in which land could become the site of a
flowing river and vice versa. Forgoing stability and perpetuity,
building structures that are adaptive, removable, and
temporary are the most realistic way to live on floodplains.
This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Ecology and Society 17(4): 48
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art48/
Flood adaptation as the mitigation approach would correct
several problems induced by flood control. First, it would not
transfer the city’s own problem elsewhere, as levees and
channelization do by reducing floodplain retention and
increasing flow velocity to increase downstream flooding, and
as flood-control dams do by submerging upstream areas to
displace people. Second, it would not increase long-term flood
risk, as there is no threat of flood-control infrastructure failure,
through which damages by larger floods would be more
catastrophic than if there were no flood-control infrastructure
(Tobin 1995). Third, it would not conflict with, but rather could
reconcile with ecological preservation and restoration of urban
rivers by allowing ecologically critical periodic floods to
reconnect the channel and floodplain (Nienhuis and Leuven
2001). Resilience-based management supports the recovery
of river health because the ability of the river to provide
ecosystem services promotes urban resilience to floods.
The process of incorporating change continuously gives rise
to resilience (Holling 1986). Therefore, resilience-based
management is itself adaptive and a learning-by-doing
process, where specific objectives are open to adjustment after
each flood. In resilient cities, the built environment is adaptive
in two ways: it is fit for known river dynamics based on historic
patterns; it is also easily adjustable to changing boundary
conditions, such as climate change and population growth.
The resilient city is always a work in progress.
Redefining the norm
Managing resilience is an agenda of multiple scales, because
resilience is controlled by dynamics at scales above and below
the scale of the system in question (Walker et al. 2004,
Anderies et al. 2006). The city’s subsystems affect urban
resilience to floods by controlling its position in the basin of
attraction. Compare different mitigation approaches for
example: flood control places the city very close to the
threshold between desirable and undesirable regimes during
high flows, because the city tolerates little inundation; whereas
flood adaptation places the city further away. Other internal
factors that affect urban resilience to floods includes river
health, economic status of households, institutional flexibility,
design and operation of buildings and critical infrastructure,
crisis support network, etc. The subsystems are
simultaneously influenced by economic, cultural, biophysical,
and climatic dynamics at regional and even global scales,
which change the shape of the basin of attraction to affect
urban resilience to floods. Managing for urban resilience to
floods thus requires attending to these cross-scale
interactions.
A large-scale factor critically affecting urban resilience to
floods is the norm of socioeconomic dynamics. Cities that are
dependent on flood-control infrastructure are nonresilient not
only because they are too close to the threshold but also
because the current desirable regime is small/shallow (Fig. 3),

resulting from little tolerance of socioeconomic fluctuation
(Fig. 4). The norm in modern society is the execution of
unabated socioeconomic activities, such that when a flood
occurs and goods and services are not produced it is called
economic loss, and that when mobility is limited by a flood it
is considered inconvenient. However, the ideology that the
same socioeconomic activities should be carried out
continuously is built on the premise of environmental stability,
the maintenance of which is likely to be more difficult because
extreme storm events are expected to increase with climate
change (Alley et al. 2007). As environmental stability becomes
uncertain, the best strategy to remain in the desirable regime
is to enlarge the regime itself (Carpenter et al. 2001). Because
the boundary of desirable regime is socially constructed,
expanding it involves redefining the norm—society needs to
accept necessary changes in the form and intensity of
socioeconomic activities, because the supporting infrastructure,
even if adaptive to flooding, may still be limited by it. It does
not mean accepting system failure during flooding, rather it
implies socioeconomic flexibility and adaptability. This
would involve a worldview change away from the obsession
of stability (Folke 2003).
CONCLUSION
With growing popularity, the term resilience is increasingly
used vaguely such that it is becoming like the word
sustainability, i.e., having a diluted and unclear meaning
(Brand and Jax 2007). Without a rigorous definition and some
form of measurement, resilience would not be a useful concept
for practice (Manyena 2006). This paper presents a
comprehensive theory of urban resilience that embraces
inherent dynamism and uncertainties to provide unconventional
perspectives for coping with flood hazards. It addresses the
issue of extreme floods, which cannot be neglected any longer.
The theory suggests flood adaptation, and it challenges the
conventional wisdom that cities cannot live without flood
control. The development of the theory of urban resilience to
floods is an attempt to enrich the existing body of resilience
theory through focusing on a specific type of system with a
specific problem. Research on resilience associated with
human-nature couplings is still in an explorative stage with
few practical methods for real-world applications (Carpenter
et al. 2005, Folke 2006). The theory of urban resilience to
floods, along with the surrogate measure of percent floodable
area for assessing floodability, helps facilitate the application
of field-based, interdisciplinary research.
The immediate real-world challenge, however, is not how to
increase urban resilience to floods but how to catalyze the
transformation from resistant to resilient cities. A daunting
problem is that the current management regime of flood
control is itself very resilient. While disasters can be catalysts
for social transformation (Pelling and Dill 2010), transforming
by choice is much less costly. It requires transformability—
the capacity to create a fundamentally new system, about
This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Ecology and Society 17(4): 48
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art48/
which we know much less than what makes a system resilient
(Walker et al. 2004, Pelling and Manuel-Navarrete 2011). The
move towards creating resilient cities is a research frontier.
Responses to this article can be read online at:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/issues/responses.
php/5231
Acknowledgments:
I thank Marina Alberti, Robert Mugerauer, and Robert J.
Naiman of the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington,
USA; Christopher P. Konrad of the U.S. Geological Society
(USGS), Northwest Area, Tacoma, Washington, USA; and two
anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments that helped
to improve this paper.
LITERATURE CITED
Adger, W. N. 2000. Social and ecological resilience: are they
related? Progress in Human Geography 24(3):347-364.
Adger, W. N. 2006. Vulnerability. Global Environmental
Change 16:268-281. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.
gloenvcha.2006.02.006
Adger, W. N., T. P. Hughes, and C. Folke, S. R. Carpenter,
and J. Rockström. 2005. Social–ecological resilience to
coastal disasters. Science 309:1036-1039. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1126/science.1112122
Alberti, M., and J. M. Marzluff. 2004. Ecological resilience
in urban ecosystems: linking urban patterns to human and
ecological functions. Urban Ecosystems 7 (3):241-265. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1023/B:UECO.0000044038.90173.c6
Allen, C. R., L. Gunderson, and A. R. Johnson. The use of
discontinuities and functional groups to assess relative
resilience in complex systems. Ecosystems 8:985-966.
Alley, R. B., T. Berntsen, N. L. Bindoff, Z. Chen, A.
Chidthaisong, P. Friedlingstein, J. M. Gregory, G. C. Hegerl,
M. Heimann, B. Hewitson, B. J. Hoskins, F. Joos, J. Jouzel,
V. Kattsov, U. Lohmann, M. Manning, T. Matsuno, M.
Molina, N. Nicholls, J. Overpeck, D. Qin, G. Raga, V.
Ramaswamy, J. Ren, M. Rusticucci, S. Solomon, R.
Somerville, T. F. Stocker, P. A. Stott, R. J. Stouffer, P.
Whetton, R. A. Wood, and D. Wratt. 2007. Summary for
policymakers. In S. Solomon, D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen,
M. Marquis, K. B. Averyt, M. Tignor, H. L. Miller, editors.
Climate change 2007: the physical science basis. Contribution
of Working Group I to the fourth assessment report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, USA.

Anderies, J. M., B. H. Walker, and A. P. Kinzig. 2006. Fifteen
weddings and a funeral: case studies and resilience-based
management. Ecology and Society 11(1):21. [online] URL:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss1/art21/.
Anderson, M. G., D. R. Walling, and P. Bates, editors. 1996.
Floodplain processes. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/11035890401263279
Antrobus, D. 2010. The importance of the “not-so-cool”
sectors: creative solutions to reconcile environmental and
economic sustainability within a floodplain. Local
Environment 15(4):295-308. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/951696
Associated Programme on Flood Management. 2009.
Integrated flood management concept paper. World
Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
Bennett, E. M., G. S., Cumming, and G. D. Peterson. 2005. A
system model approach to determining resilience surrogates
for case studies. Ecosystems 8:945-957. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1007/s10021-005-0141-3
Berke, P. R., and T. J. Campanella. 2006. Planning for
postdisaster resiliency. Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science 604:192. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1177/0002716205285533
Berkes, F. 2007. Understanding uncertainty and reducing
vulnerability: lessons from resilience thinking. Natural
Hazards 41(2):283-295. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11069-006-9036-7
Berkes, F., J. Colding, and C. Folke, editors. 2003. Navigating
social–ecological systems: building resilience for complexity
and change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Berkes, F., and C. Folke, editors. 1998. Linking social and
ecological systems: management practices and social
mechanisms for building resilience. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, UK.
Birkland, T. A., R. J. Burby, D. Conrad, H. Cortner, and W.
K. Michener. 2003. River ecology and flood hazard mitigation.
Natural Hazards Review 4(1):46-54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)
1527-6988(2003)4:1(46)
Birkland, T. A., and S. Waterman. 2009. The politics and
policy challenges of disaster resilience. Pages 15-38 in C. P.
Nemeth, E. Hollnagel, and S. Dekker, editors. Resilience
engineering perspectives. Volume 2: preparation and
restoration. Ashgate Publishing Limited, Surrey, UK.
Bosher, L. 2008. Introduction: the need for built-in resilience.
Pages 3-19 in L. S. Bosher, editor. Hazards and the built
environment: attaining built-in resilience. Taylor and Francis,
London, UK.
Brand, F. S., and K. Jax. 2007. Focusing the meaning(s) of
resilience: resilience as a descriptive concept and a boundary
This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Ecology and Society 17(4): 48
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art48/
object. Ecology and Society 12(1):23. [online] URL: http://
www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol12/iss1/art23/.
Bruneau, M., S. E. Chang, R. T. Eguchi, G. C. Lee, T. D.
O’Rourke, A. M. Reinhorn, M. Shinozuka, K. Tierney, W. A.
Wallace, and D. von Winterfeldt. 2003. A framework to
quantitatively assess and enhance the seismic resilience of
communities. Earthquake Spectra 19(4):733–752.
Burby, R. J., R. E., Deyle, D. R. Godschalk, and R. B.
Olshansky. 2000. Creating hazard resilient communities
through land-use planning. Natural Hazards Review 1
(2):99-106. http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)1527-6988(2000)
1:2(99)
Carpenter, S. R., and W. A. Brock. 2008. Adaptive capacity
and traps. Ecology and Society 13(2):40. [online] URL: http://
www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art40/.
Carpenter, S. R., B. Walker, J. M. Anderies, and N. Abel. 2001.
From metaphor to measurement: resilience of what to what?
Ecosystems 4 (8):765-781.
Carpenter, S. R., F. Westley, and M. Turner. 2005. Surrogates
for resilience of social–ecological systems. Ecosystems
8:941-944. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10021-005-0170-y
Castonguay, S. 2007. The production of flood as natural
catastrophe: extreme events and the construction of
vulnerability in the drainage basin of the St. Francis River
(Quebec), mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century.
Environmental History 12:820-844. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/
envhis/12.4.820
Colten, C. E., and A. R. Sumpter. 2009. Social memory and
resilience in New Orleans. Natural Hazards 48(3):355-364.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11069-008-9267-x
Correia, F. N., M. Fordham, D. G. Saraiva, and F. Bernado.
1998. Flood hazard assessment and management: interface
with the public. Water Resources Management 12(3):209–
227.
Costanza, R., R. d'Arge, R. de Groot, S. Farber, M. Grasso, B.
Hannon, K. Limburg, S. Naeem, R. V. O'Neill, J. Paruelo, R.
G. Raskin, P. Sutton, and M. van den Belt. 1997. The value
of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature
387:253-260. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/387253a0
Criss, R. E., and E. L. Shock. 2001. Flood enhancement
through flood control. Geology 29(10):875-873. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0875:FETFC>2.0.CO;2
Cumming, G. S., G. Barnes, S. Perz, M. Schmink, K. E.
Sieving, J. Southworth, M. Binford, R. D. Holt, C. Stickler,
and T. van Holt. 2005. An exploratory framework for the
empirical measurement of resilience. Ecosystems 8:975-987.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10021-005-0129-z
 Ecology and Society 17(4): 48
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art48/

Cumming, G. S., D. H. M. Cumming, and C. L. Redman. 2006. Guikema, S. D. 2009. Infrastructure design issues in disaster-
Scale mismatches in social–ecological systems: causes, prone-regions. Science 323:1302-1303. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/
consequences, and solutions. Ecology and Society 11(1):14. science.1169057
[online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss1/
Gunderson, L. H. 2000. Ecological resilience—in theory and
art14/.
application. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics
Cuny, F. C. 1991. Living with floods: alternatives for riverine 31:425-439. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.31.1.425
flood mitigation. Land Use Policy 8(4):331-342.
Gunderson, L. H. 2010. Ecological and human community
Davidson-Hunt, I., and F. Berkes. 2003. Nature and society resilience in response to natural disasters. Ecology and Society
through the lens of resilience: toward a human-in-ecosystem 15(2):18. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/
perspective. Pages 53-82 in F. Berkes, J. Colding, and C. vol15/iss2/art18/.
Folke. Navigating social–ecological systems: building
Gunderson, L. H., and C. S. Holling, editors. 2002. Panarchy:
resilience for complexity and change. Cambridge University
understanding transformations in human and natural systems.
Press, Cambridge, UK. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/
Island Press, Washington D.C., USA.
CBO9780511541957.006
Hashimoto, T., J. R. Stedinger, and D. P. Loucks. 1982.
De Bruijn, K. M. 2004. Resilience indicators for flood risk
Reliability, resiliency, and vulnerability criteria for water
management systems of lowland rivers. International Journal
resource system performance evaluation. Water Resources
of River Basin Management 2(3):199-210. http://dx.doi.
Research 18(1):14-20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/WR018i001p00014
org/10.1080/15715124.2004.9635232
Heylighen, F. 2001. The science of self-organization and
Douglas, I., M. Kobold, N. Lawson, E. Pasche, and I. White.
adaptivity. L.D. Kiel, editor. Knowledge management,
2007. Characterisation of urban streams and urban flooding.
organizational intelligence and learning, and complexity. The
Pages 29-58 in R. Ashley, S. Garvin, E. Pasche, A.
Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. Eolss Publishers,
Vassilopoulos, and C. Zevenbergen, editors. Advances in
Oxford, UK.
urban flood management. Taylor & Francis, New York, New
York, USA. http://dx.doi.org/10.1201/9780203945988.ch3 Holling, C. S. 1973. Resilience and stability of ecological
systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4:1-23.
Etkin, D. 1999. Risk transference and related trends: driving
http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.es.04.110173.000245
forces towards more mega-disasters. Environmental Hazards
1:69-75. http://dx.doi.org/10.3763/ehaz.1999.0109 Holling, C. S. 1986. The resilience of terrestrial ecosystems:
local surprise and global change. Pages 292-317 in W. C. Clark
Fiering, M. B. 1982. Alternative indices of resilience. Water
and R. E. Munn, editors. Sustainable development of the
Resources Research 18(1):33-39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/
biosphere. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
WR018i001p00033
Holling, C. S. 1996. Engineering resilience versus ecological
Folke, C. 2003. Freshwater for resilience: a shift in thinking.
resilience. Pages 31-43 in P. C. Schulze, editor. Engineering
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London:
within ecological constraints. National Academy Press,
Series B Biological Sciences 358(1440):2027-2036. http://dx.
Washington D.C., USA.
doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2003.1385
Holling, C. S., L. H. Gunderson, and G. D. Peterson. 2002.
Folke, C. 2006. Resilience: the emergence of a perspective for
Sustainability and panarchies. Pages 63-102 in L. H.
social–ecological systems analyses. Global Environmental
Gunderson and C. S. Holling, editors. Panarchy:
Change 16:253-267. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.
understanding transformations in human and natural systems.
gloenvcha.2006.04.002
Island Press, Washington D.C., USA.
Folke, C., S. Carpenter, T. Elmqvist, L. Gunderson, C. S.
Holling C. S., and G. K. Meffe. 1996. Command and control
Holling, and B. Walker. 2002. Resilience and sustainable
and the pathology of natural resource management.
development: building adaptive capacity in a world of
Conservation Biology 10 (2):328-37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/
transformations. Ambio 31(5):437-440.
j.1523-1739.1996.10020328.x
Groffman, P. M., D. J. Bain, L. E. Band, K. T. Belt, G. S.
Hollnagel, E., C. P. Memeth, and S. Dekker, editors. 2008.
Brush, J. M. Grove, R. V. Pouyat, I. C. Yesilonis, and W. C.
Resilience engineering perspectives. volume 1: remaining
Zipperer. 2003. Down by the riverside: urban riparian ecology.
sensitive to the possibility of failure. Ashgate, Burlington,
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 1(6):315-321.
Vermont, USA.
Godschalk, D. R. 2003. Urban hazard mitigation: creating
Howe, C., and C. Mitchell, editors. 2012. Water Sensitive
resilient cities. Natural Hazards Review 4(3):136-143. http://
Cities. IWA Publishing, London, UK.
dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)1527-6988(2003)4:3(136)

This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Jacobs, J. C. J. 2012. The Rotterdam approach: connecting
water with opportunities. Pages 251-263 in C. Howe and C.
Mitchell, editors. Water Sensitive Cities. IWA Publishing,
London, UK.
Junk, W. J., P. B. Bayley, and R. E. Sparks. 1989. The flood
pulse concept in river–floodplain systems. Special Publication
of the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
106:110-127.
Keddy, P. A. 2000. Wetland ecology: principles and
conservation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Klein, R. J. T., R. J. Nicholls, and F. Thomalla. 2003.
Resilience to natural hazards: how useful is this concept?
Environmental Hazards 5:35-45.
Klein, R. J. T., M. J. Smit, H. Goosen, and C. H. Hulsbergen.
1998. Resilience and vulnerability: coastal dynamics or Dutch
dikes? The Geographical Journal 164 (3):259–268.
Laituri, M. J. 2000. Cultural perspectives of flooding. Pages
451-468 in E. E. Wohl, editor. Inland flood hazards: human,
riparian, and aquatic communities. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, UK. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/
CBO9780511529412.018
Leopold, L. B. 1977. A reverence for rivers. Geology
5:429-430. http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(1977)5<429:
ARFR>2.0.CO;2
Leopold, L. B. 1994. Flood hydrology and the floodplain.
Water Resources Update 95:11-15.
Liu, J., T. Dietz, S. R. Carpenter, M. Alberti, C. Folke, E.
Moran, A. N. Pell, P. Deadman, T. Kratz, J. Lubchenco, E.
Ostrom, Z. Ouyang, W. Provencher, C. L. Redman, S. H.
Schneider, and W. W. Taylor. 2007. Complexity of coupled
human and natural systems. Science 317:1513-1516. http://dx.
doi.org/10.1126/science.1144004
López-Marrero, T., and P. Tschakert. 2011. From theory to
practice: building more resilient communities in flood-prone
areas. Environment & Urbanization 23(1):229-249. http://dx.
doi.org/10.1177/0956247810396055
Low, B., E. Ostrom, C. Simon, and J. Wilson. 2003.
Redundancy and diversity: do they influence optimal
management? Pages 83-114 in F. Berkes, J. Colding, and C.
Folke. Navigating social–ecological systems: building
resilience for complexity and change. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, UK.
Manyena, S. B. 2006. The concept of resilience revisited.
Disasters 30(4):433-450. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/
j.0361-3666.2006.00331.x
Mileti, D. S. 1999. Disasters by design: a reassessment of
natural hazards in the United States. Joseph Henry Press,
Washington D.C., USA.
This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Ecology and Society 17(4): 48
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art48/
Milly, P. C. D., J. Betancourt, M. Falkenmark, R. M. Hirsch,
Z. W. Kundzewicz, D. P. Lettenmaier, and R. J. Stouffer. 2008.
Stationarity is dead: whither water management? Science
319:573-574.
Moss, T., and J. Monstadt, editors. 2008. Restoring floodplains
in Europe: policy contexts and project experiences. IWA
Publishing, London, UK.
Nienhuis, P. H., and R. S. E. W. Leuven. 2001. River
restoration and flood protection: controversy or synergism?
Hydrobiologia 444:85-89.
Opperman, J. J., G. E. Galloway, J. Fargione, J. F. Mount, B.
D. Richter, and S. Secchi. 2009. Sustainable floodplains
through large-scale reconnection to rivers. Science
326:1487-1488. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1178256
Pahl-Wostl, C. 2002. Towards sustainability in the water
sector—the importance of human actors and processes of
social learning. Aquatic Sciences 64:394-411. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1007/PL00012594
Paul, M. J., and J. L. Meyer. 2001. Streams in the urban
landscape. Annual Review of Ecology & Systematics
32:333-365.
Pelling, M. 2003. Vulnerability of Cities: Natural Disasters
and Social Resilience. Earthscan Publications, London, UK.
Pelling, M., and C. Dill. 2010. Disaster politics: tipping points
for change in the adaptation of sociopolitical regimes.
Progress in Human Geography 34:21-37. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1177/0309132509105004
Pelling, M., and D. Manuel-Navarrete. 2011. From resilience
to transformation: the adaptive cycle in two Mexican urban
centers. Ecology and Society 16(2):11. [online] URL: http://
www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol16/iss2/art11/.
Peterson G., C. R. Allen, and C. S. Holling. 1998. Ecological
resilience, biodiversity, and scale. Ecosystems 1:6-18. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1007/s100219900002
Poff, N. L., J. D. Allan, M. B. Bain, J. R. Karr, K. L.
Prestegaard, B. D. Richter, R. E. Sparks, and J. C. Stromberg.
1997. The nature flow regime: a paradigm for river
conservation and restoration. BioScience 47 (11):769-784.
Richards, K., and F. Hughes. 2008. Floodplains in Europe: the
case for restoration. Pages 16-43 in T. Moss, and J. Monstadt,
editors. Restoring floodplains in Europe: policy contexts and
project experiences. IWA publishing, London, UK.
Roberge, M. 2002. Human modification of the geomorphically
unstable Salt River in metropolitan Phoenix. The Professional
Geographer 54(2):175-189. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0033--
0124.00324
 Ecology and Society 17(4): 48
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art48/

Scheffer, M., S. Carpenter, J. A. Foley, C. Folke, and B. Walker, B., C. S. Holling, S. R. Carpenter, and A. Kinzig.
Walker. 2001. Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems. Nature 413 2004. Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social–
(11):591-596. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2003.09.002 ecological systems. Ecology and Society 9(2):5. [online] URL:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5/.
Scheffer, M., S. H. Hosper, M-L. Meijer, B. Moss, and E.
Jeppesen. 1993. Alternative equilibria in shallow lakes. Trends Walker, B., and F. Westley. 2011. Perspectives on resilience
in Ecology and Revolution 8(8):275-279. http://dx.doi. to disasters across sectors and cultures. Ecology and Society
org/10.1016/0169-5347(93)90254-M 16(2):4. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/
vol16/iss2/art4/.
Schielen, R. M. J., and G. Roovers. 2008. Adaptation as a way
for flood management. Proceedings of the 4th International Wang. C., and J. M. Blackmore. 2009. Resilience concepts for
Symposium on Flood Defence: Managing Flood Risk, water resource systems. Journal of Water Resources Planning
Reliability and Vulnerability May 6-8, 2008, Toronto, and Management 135(6):528-536. http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)
Ontario, Canada. 0733-9496(2009)135:6(528)
Schneidergruber, M., M. Cierna, and T. Jones. 2004. Living White, G. F. 1945. Human adjustment to floods: a
with floods: achieving ecologically sustainable flood geographical approach to the flood problem in the United
management in Europe. WWF European Policy, Brussels, States. Department of Geography, University of Chicago,
Belgium. Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Smit, B., and J. Wandel. 2006. Adaptation, adaptive capacity Zevenbergen, C., and B. Gersonius. 2007. Challenges in urban
and vulnerability. Global Environmental Change 16:282-292. flood management. Pages 1-11 in R. Ashley, S. Garvin, E.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2006.03.008 Pasche, A. Vassilopoulos, and Zevenbergen, editors.
Advances in urban flood management. Taylor & Francis, New
Smits, A. J. M., P. H. Nienhuis, and H. L. F. Saeijs. 2006.
York, New York, USA. http://dx.doi.org/10.1201/9780203945988.
Changing estuaries, changing views. Hydrobiologia
ch1
565:339-355. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10750-005-1924-4
Tabacchi, E., L. Lambs, H. Guiloy, A. Planty-Tacacchi, E.
Muller, and H. Décamps. 2000. Impacts of riparian vegetation
on hydrological processes. Hydrological Processes
14:2959-2976. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/1099-1085(200011/12)
14:16/17<2959::AID-HYP129>3.0.CO;2-B
Tobin, G. A. 1995. The levee love affair: a stormy
relationship? Water Resources Bulletin 31(3):359-367.
Tobin, G. A. 1999. Sustainability and community resilience:
the holy grail of hazards planning? Environmental Hazards
1:13-25.
Tockner, K., S. E. Bunn, C. Gordon, R. J. Naiman, G. P. Quinn,
and J. A. Standford. 2008. Flood plains: critically threatened
ecosystems. Pages 45-61 in N. V. C. Polunin, editor. Aquatic
ecosystems. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511751790.006
Tompkins, E. L., and W. N. Adger. 2004. Does adaptive
management of natural resources enhance resilience to climate
change? Ecology and Society 9(2):10. [online] URL: http://
www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art10/.
United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.
2004. Living with Risk: A Global Review of Disaster Reduction
Initiatives. United Nations, New York, New York, USA.
Vale, L. J., and T. J. Campanella, editors. 2005. The resilient
city: how modern cities recover from disaster. Oxford
University Press, Oxford, UK.

This content downloaded from 122.54.141.240 on Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms